A widow with two children and no money is refused help by her husband's family and makes her living by writing for the newspapers. Fanny Fern had done exactly that; the book is a settling of accounts with her relatives, who were all recognized, and it sold seventy thousand copies. This edition includes a gallery of 55 plates of summer landscape paintings by Munch, Kensett, Durand and Inness, dated 1830–1896.
